This article analyzes the media effects on political knowledge after controlling for the
most common factors (motivation, ability, and opportunities) in Spain. In addition,
it explores whether the media contribute to increasing the existent knowledge
gap in the Spanish polity. The results show that only one medium appears to have
significant effects on knowledge: newspapers. An additional finding is that exposure to
political information in newspapers does not reinforce the knowledge gap between
different socioeconomic groups. Moreover, the relationship between education and
knowledge appears to be weaker among heavy newspaper users than among light
newspaper users. Interestingly, this result runs contrary to that predicted by the
knowledge gap hypothesis and suggests that political institutions should promote
increased access to the press for poorly educated citizens, particularly in countries
where there is an extremely polarized media system, with a clear political alignment
of the main media holdings, such as the case of Spain.